Imagine our delight, then, when Esquire's food and travel correspondent and the author of the list, John Mariani, reached out to us regarding our displeasure with his selections. He reminded us that back in 2000 Lee Brown, the mayor of Houston at the time, proclaimed October 19 "John Mariani Day" in appreciation of Mariani's recognition of Houston's dining scene. So because everyone -- even folks who wrongly choose Dallas over Houston -- deserves a fair trial, we gave Mariani a call so he could speak in his defense.

"First of all," Mariani told us, "I just want to address the fact that I name 20 restaurants in the U.S., so not every year is every city going to have one. This year I got to Austin for two or three days, and spent the same amount of time in Houston and Dallas. I found a number of places in each city that were certainly worthy."

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Ithink one thing that Mr. Mariani's articile and follow up comments highlight better than anything about the city of Houston is that it does far too little to promote itself as the extremely cosmopolitan, international center that it for all things of a cultural nature, food included. Houston is overlooked in virtually every national article like Mr. Mariani's, regardless of what the "top ten" is focused on. This is a failure of our city government that is so lackluster that in all likelihood I bet there are not a hundred readers of this paper who could name their own city councilperson much less the head of the school board, the name of the county judge or anyone else who should be thought of as a "leader". The local media is also to blame for much of this. There was a time when Houston was full of cultural superstars, be it the opera, ballet, museums, etc. or individuals like Joann Herring, Carolyn Farb, Lynn Wyatt, Maxine Messinger, Marge Crumbaker and Betty Ewing because everything about Houston had a bigger than life personality. Today, while there must be civic leaders like the named women or institutions, if there is no media that makes there names known and there activities true events that make the reader what to know them and be part of the action.

When a guy hooks up with a publicist for restaurants to tour Houston's restaurant scene one wonders about his legitimacy. Teresa Byrne-Dodge used to write restaurant "reviews" for the old Houston Post that had, in tiny print about the "column" the word advertisement. This was done only after the public learned that she was a restaurant flak. There is nothing wrong with being a flak for restaurants but if Mr. Mariani's source of information about Houston restaurants starts with a flak, it is going to probably be pretty limited to the restaurants she flaks for and to the handful of other places that can afford flaks to push their places. If one reads Mr. Mariani's list of notable places in Houston, it is limited to the same half a dozen places that are always mentioned by national writers who do not have enough sense to get in their car and drive around town looking for the great food that Houston has to offer. It is not necessary to go to Underbelly to have a dish inspired by an authentic ethnic cuisine when the chef at Underbelly drove about ten miles to learn how to prepare the dish from a master at making it. Why not just go to the source. In Houston there are many sources that far outdo their higher priced far more pretentious ripoffs.

Interesting follow-up, really glad you reached out to him with curiosity instead of just dismissing his piece with a supremely smug confidence as some others did.

I really like how he skirts the critcism though. 'Hey I'm not anonymous because I'm not a critic, just a feature writer about food and restaurants'. That's a strawman. The criticism is that his staff calls the restaurant, asking them to host (meaning pay for) a dinner with John Mariani, and if they decline they get no coverage. Second, that he accepts other gifts from the subjects he is writing about. This pay for play way of approaching your subject would prompt one to question how objective his pieces are, at the very least.

Agree with the lackluster image part...I think maybe it's more the fault of the city and its poor marketing rather than the local media. After all, we have scores of media like CultureMap, PaperCity, Houston Modern Luxury and Houstonia, whose raison d'etre seems to be to celebrate and create minor superstars and cover their every doing with bated breath.

@jbritta In Mr. Mariani's defense, he states that his best new selections must be able to stand up against the "top" restaurants in those cities. And I don't think any credible critic gives any resto a pass, no matter the city in which it happens to be located.

Whoa! That's news about Teresa Byrne-Dodge, I vaguely remember those columns and forgot that they were called on it, but I always thought there was something askew about Teresa's image of virtuous dining doyenne, friend to restaurateur big and small. I noticed an especially smarmy business relationship between her publication and Patterson & Murphy PR.

Ha! Like your smug dismissal reference. I read Eric's response to this piece at CultureMap and blew coffee through my nose, him calling Mariani an 'overblown restaurant critic', and sounding like a child who is stomping his foot and taking home his toys.

Perhaps the problem is that the minor superstars are just not as dynamic and special to ever be real superstars because they are just not that special. Carolyn Farb, Lynn Wyatt, Joann Herring, Dominique deMenil, and a handful of other women have/had personalities that filled a room and made others open their bank accounts to build the cultural institutions into internationally recognized things that brought travelers here from everywhere. It was not only cultural institutions, but many years ago Carolyn Farb mounted a campaign to promote a cancer treatment center at MD Anderson and raised what was then an enormous amount in one night that attracted attention from everywhere. Joann Herring apparently moved Congress to fund the Taliban to fight the Russians in Afghanistan when the Taliban were on our side. I do not think it is the media to is wholly to blame but there is no media at work in Houston today that actually does any investigative reporting as there was twenty years ago. Many things happen here that have worldwide implications that one does not hear about because of a lackluster media and a very poorly operated city hall that fails to promote the activities of what happens here. It is a combination of both the failure of media and city hall that leaves Houston in the shadows even as it continues to be in a boom period of growth right now that will most likely come to a pretty screeching halt comes in a year or a year and a half, as the natural course of our longstanding boom/ bust behavior should be entering into a bust period when there will be more CityCenter type developments than we could need and more $1500/mo 650 sq foot apartments than there young people saddled with student and BMW loans to fill them.

she's running the same scam as at the Post, only instead of a column, now she has a magazine, My Table, that is sent free to restaurants. murphy, the pr person, comes in explaining she can get them good coverage in, among other places, my table, and surprise! the reviews in my table are glowing. for this, murphy collects the pr fees from the restaurant, My Table gets the advertising dollars, and it's a win-win for byrne-dodge and murphy. restaurants feel like they are getting exposure but it's mostly among their comrades in the business, who aren't customers on any scale. only difference between her and mariani is that her operation is small time and uses a middleman to collect the perks. but it all comes back to them in the end, and probably does lots less for the restaurant than mariani's nat'l exposure.

Right, funny, I thought 'overblown' was an unfortunate word choice coming from Eric. He could have chosen 'vaunted' like his outfit used in announcing his arrival; I might note that they never called him a critic, for which I credit them. I wonder if Eric considers himself a critic, or conversely whether he considers Mariani just a fellow food writer, although he calls him a 'critic' in the headline.

@DDyson I have had the occasion to deal with both of the leading candidates for mayor. They are proof perfect that if one avoids taking any controversial positions on anything that might challenge the power brokers in this city, they can climb heights that prove the Peter Principle. Annise Parker is our bookkeeper-in-chief. She and the girlfriend must be very good bookkeepers because on a government salary and the income of a bookkeeper they certainly have a very fancy house on the only smoothly paved street in Montrose. So smooth in fact you would think you were driving in River Oaks. Based on my professional dealings with her, well I have nothing nice to say so I will just won't say anything.

All I can say about Ben Hall is that in the 1990s he did not allow attorneys in his office to have anything on their desks except the file that they were working on at that moment. The atmosphere was suffocating and the representation uninspired. On his desk, there was nothing. Out of his mouth, came nothing.

Funny you draw a parallel between John Mariani and Teresa Byrne-Dodge. Who features prominently on the My Table website endorsing the magazine as a fun read? Yep, John Mariani himself. Birds of a feather....

@MGenscher@KaitlinS Perhaps. I honestly can't speak to his business practices, but I will say he was a really nice, forthcoming guy, and he reached out to us about chatting! So that was cool. It's clear he likes Houston a lot, it just didn't make the cut this year.

I can understand then why the headlines seem so often disjointed from the stories they introduce; I'm saving a list for Letterman. You'd think an editor familiar with Eric's amplitude might be sensitive, unless it was done in jest.